Online entrepreneur, who started with drop-shipping back in 1997, and has now evolved to private label brands, selling professionally online using Amazon FBA, Walmart, and Shopify eCommerce stores.
As one of the pioneers, he still talks about the times he wanted to know very basic things, but YouTube didn’t exist and there were no experts or gurus on social media.
Quin’s first online sale was on eBay in the late ’90s and in 2014 switched to Amazon FBA, where he has since created several brands of his own “Private Label”, and manages several multi-million dollar accounts with his Prolific team.
Quin manages online product distribution, sponsored product campaigns, Pay Per Click advertising, generating brand awareness, developing and launching products, customer support, and offers many more services to help grow your brand.
Quin founded the “Prolific Zone” agency that works with startups, professional Amazon sellers, International eCommerce companies, supplement companies, and even has performed product research for a couple of fortune 500 companies.
“As a creator of private label brands and being an Amazon FBA seller myself, I’m very passionate about anything related to selling products over the internet.
Quin’s Favorite topics:
Private Label – What is PL, what can be private labeled, how to private label, and where to sell.
How to get more sales on Amazon – unique products, sales velocity combined with relevancy, organic ranking, plus much more!
Pet Peeve – How most sellers don’t know their numbers and don’t know the difference between sales, markup, and net profit!
Quin Amorim is the host of 2 podcasts:
– QA Selling Online – Tips, tricks, questions, and answers about eCommerce and selling on Amazon (Over 50K worldwide listeners per month).
– Fail Fast Podcast – Interviews with successful entrepreneurs, who talk about their past failures, lessons learned, and what they do today (Over 1 million hours downloaded on iTunes) Both Podcasts are available on iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, Soundcloud, and even Amazon Alexa.
Quin’s preferred books:
- Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell
- The Automatic Millionaire – David Bach
- Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind – T. Harv Eker
Favorite podcasts:
- Growth Experts – Dennis Brown
- Art of Paid Traffic – Rick Mulready
- Fail Fast Podcast – Quin Amorim (I had to throw it in there, lol)
- How I Built This – Guy Raz
- Jordan Harbinger Show – Jordan Harbinger
- Marketing School – Neil Patel and Eric Siu
How Quin Amorim Started Selling Online In 1997
I started selling online in 1997, way before it was cool to sell online. It wasn’t because I wanted to start an online business, but out of necessity in order to have money to party with my friends.
I was living in Portugal, a small country in Europe with perfect weather, beautiful beaches, and the 4th most peaceful country on earth!
Even though I had a decent 9-5 job, I still struggled to stretch my salary until the end of the month, so I always kept my eyes open to new opportunities.
One day I saw some wooden statues for sale on a window display of a store, they were hand-carved statues of people and animals. I wanted to buy every single one for myself, but the reality is that I couldn’t afford a single one.
Because the storefront was very hidden, I started to imagine how many other people with money would have bought all those statues if they only knew they existed.
On the drive home I started to think about that “new American website that has auctions”, and maybe I could sell them there…
That new website was eBay, and that day I opened an account (that I still have 23 years later) and I found out that I could sell things on ebay.com since there was no eBay in Portugal.
The next day, I took my camera to work (no smartphone yet) and took pictures of all the statues in the store. When I got home I uploaded them all to eBay with a 100% markup, and my plan was to sell the item on my picture, collect the money, then go back to the store, buy it, and ship to the customer in the USA.
What I did back in 1997, today would be a weird form of drop-shipping. However, I didn’t know that term, so I called it “Selling the Picture” because the picture was the only thing I owned at the time.
With time, I realized that selling unique, handmade products wasn’t scalable, because there was only one of each, and if someone bought the item from the store before I got there, I had to refund the purchases and risk getting bad feedback.
Years later, I stumbled across a Chinese website called DH Gate and started buying products in bulk. From cell phone cases, (the main brand at that time was Nokia) to the first android tablets, to mini motorcycles!
A few years after that I started creating my own private label products, and switched to sourcing from Alibaba, although I’ve never had any issues with DH Gate.
Fast forward to 2015, I discovered podcasts and audiobooks.
My mind was blown with the amount of free information out there, and I got a huge feeling of loss for not knowing about podcasts all those years!
So, I started binge-listening to podcasts for several hours every day. While driving, while working, in bed, and I even set up waterproof speakers inside the shower.
My mindset finally changed to be more “GIVE” instead of “GIVE ME” and I fell in love with the idea of helping others.
With over 20 years of experience, I didn’t need to feel “Imposter Syndrome”, and I decided to start my own podcast, and remove the things I didn’t like from all the podcasts I was listening too: Advertising!
Until then, I was always a very private person online, because I saw social media as a gossip tool and a way for competitors to take my ideas.
In 2016 when I started my podcast, I still had my Facebook account private, my Instagram Private, had never used my Twitter account and my LinkedIn didn’t even have a Picture!
Now, I love social media as a tool to spread knowledge and information that can change people’s lives just like it changed mine. “
Quin Amorim